grades of the objectification of will, unorganised nature, the mass of the
planet. It is well known that all the high notes which are easily sounded,
and die away more quickly, are produced by the vibration in their vicinity
of the deep bass-notes. When, also, the low notes sound, the high notes
always sound faintly, and it is a law of harmony that only those high
notes may accompany a bass-note which actually already sound along with it
of themselves (its _sons harmoniques_) on account of its vibration. This
is analogous to the fact that the whole of the bodies and organisations of
nature must be regarded as having come into existence through gradual
development out of the mass of the planet; this is both their supporter
and their source, and the same relation subsists between the high notes
and the bass. There is a limit of depth, below which no sound is audible.
This corresponds to the fact that no matter can be perceived without form
and quality, _i.e._, without the manifestation of a force which cannot be
further explained, in which an Idea expresses itself, and, more generally,
that no matter can be entirely without will. Thus, as a certain pitch is
inseparable from the note as such, so a certain grade of the manifestation
of will is inseparable from matter. Bass is thus, for us, in harmony what
unorganised nature, the crudest mass, upon which all rests, and from which
everything originates and develops, is in the world. Now, further, in the
whole of the complemental parts which make up the harmony between the bass
and the leading voice singing the melody, I recognise the whole gradation
of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself. Those nearer to the
bass are the lower of these grades, the still unorganised, but yet
manifold phenomenal things; the higher represent to me the world of plants
and beasts. The definite intervals of the scale are parallel to the
definite grades of the objectification of will, the definite species in
nature. The departure from the arithmetical correctness of the intervals,
through some temperament, or produced by the key selected, is analogous to
the departure of the individual from the type of the species. Indeed, even
the impure discords, which give no definite interval, may be compared to
the monstrous abortions produced by beasts of two species, or by man and
beast. But to all these bass and complemental parts which make up the
_harmony_ there is wanting that connected progress which belongs only to
the high voice singing the melody, and it alone moves quickly and lightly
in modulations and runs, while all these others have only a slower
movement without a connection in each part for itself. The deep bass moves
most slowly, the representative of the crudest mass. Its rising and
falling occurs only by large intervals, in thirds, fourths, fifths, never
by _one_ tone, unless it is a base inverted by double counterpoint. This
slow movement is also physically essential to it; a quick run or shake in
the low notes cannot even be imagined. The higher complemental parts,
which are parallel to animal life, move more quickly, but yet without
melodious connection and significant progress. The disconnected course of
all the complemental parts, and their regulation by definite laws, is
analogous to the fact that in the whole irrational world, from the crystal
to the most perfect animal, no being has a connected consciousness of its
own which would make its life into a significant whole, and none
experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself by
culture, but everything exists always in the same way according to its
kind, determined by fixed law. Lastly, in the _melody_, in the high,
singing, principal voice leading the whole and progressing with
unrestrained freedom, in the unbroken significant connection of _one_
thought from beginning to end representing a whole, I recognise the
highest grade of the objectification of will, the intellectual life and
effort of man. As he alone, because endowed with reason, constantly looks
before and after on the path of his actual life and its innumerable
possibilities, and so achieves a course of life which is intellectual, and
therefore connected as a whole; corresponding to this, I say, the _melody_
has significant intentional connection from beginning to end. It records,
therefore, the history of the intellectually enlightened will. This will
expresses itself in the actual world as the series of its deeds; but
melody says more, it records the most secret history of this
intellectually-enlightened will, pictures every excitement, every effort,
every movement of it, all that which the reason collects under the wide
and negative concept of feeling, and which it cannot apprehend further
through its abstract concepts. Therefore it has always been said that
music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language
of reason. Plato explains it as ἡ των μελων κινησις μεμιμημενη, εν τοις
παθημασιν ὁταν ψυχη γινηται (_melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans_),
De Leg. vii.; and also Aristotle says: δια τι οἱ ρυθμοι και τα μελη, φωνη
ουσα, ηθεσιν εοικε (_cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus
similes sese exhibent?_): Probl. c. 19.
Now the nature of man consists in this, that his will strives, is
satisfied and strives anew, and so on for ever. Indeed, his happiness and
well-being consist simply in the quick transition from wish to
satisfaction, and from satisfaction to a new wish. For the absence of
satisfaction is suffering, the empty longing for a new wish, languor,
_ennui_. And corresponding to this the nature of melody is a constant
digression and deviation from the key-note in a thousand ways, not only to
the harmonious intervals to the third and dominant, but to every tone, to
the dissonant sevenths and to the superfluous degrees; yet there always
follows a constant return to the key-note. In all these deviations melody
expresses the multifarious efforts of will, but always its satisfaction
also by the final return to an harmonious interval, and still more, to the
key-note. The composition of melody, the disclosure in it of all the
deepest secrets of human willing and feeling, is the work of genius, whose
action, which is more apparent here than anywhere else, lies far from all
reflection and conscious intention, and may be called an inspiration. The
conception is here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful. The composer reveals
the inner nature of the world, and expresses the deepest wisdom in a
language which his reason does not understand; as a person under the
influence of mesmerism tells things of which he has no conception when he
awakes. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man
is entirely separated and distinct from the artist. Even in the
explanation of this wonderful art, the concept shows its poverty and
limitation. I shall try, however, to complete our analogy. As quick
transition from wish to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to a new wish,
is happiness and well-being, so quick melodies without great deviations
are cheerful; slow melodies, striking painful discords, and only winding
back through many bars to the keynote are, as analogous to the delayed and
hardly won satisfaction, sad. The delay of the new excitement of will,
languor, could have no other expression than the sustained keynote, the
effect of which would soon be unbearable; very monotonous and unmeaning
melodies approach this effect. The short intelligible subjects of quick
dance-music seem to speak only of easily attained common pleasure. On the
other hand, the _Allegro maestoso_, in elaborate movements, long passages,
and wide deviations, signifies a greater, nobler effort towards a more
distant end, and its final attainment. The _Adagio_ speaks of the pain of
a great and noble effort which despises all trifling happiness. But how
wonderful is the effect of the _minor_ and _major_! How astounding that
the change of half a tone, the entrance of a minor third instead of a
major, at once and inevitably forces upon us an anxious painful feeling,
from which again we are just as instantaneously delivered by the major.
The _Adagio_ lengthens in the minor the expression of the keenest pain,
and becomes even a convulsive wail. Dance-music in the minor seems to
indicate the failure of that trifling happiness which we ought rather to
despise, seems to speak of the attainment of a lower end with toil and
trouble. The inexhaustibleness of possible melodies corresponds to the
inexhaustibleness of Nature in difference of individuals, physiognomies,
and courses of life. The transition from one key to an entirely different
one, since it altogether breaks the connection with what went before, is
like death, for the individual ends in it; but the will which appeared in
this individual lives after him as before him, appearing in other
individuals, whose consciousness, however, has no connection with his.
But it must never be forgotten, in the investigation of all these
analogies I have pointed out, that music has no direct, but merely an
indirect relation to them, for it never expresses the phenomenon, but only
the inner nature, the in-itself of all phenomena, the will itself. It does
not therefore express this or that particular and definite joy, this or
that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or delight, or merriment, or peace of
mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, delight, merriment, peace of mind
_themselves_, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature,
without accessories, and therefore without their motives. Yet we
completely understand them in this extracted quintessence. Hence it arises
that our imagination is so easily excited by music, and now seeks to give
form to that invisible yet actively moved spirit-world which speaks to us
directly, and clothe it with flesh and blood, _i.e._, to embody it in an
analogous example. This is the origin of the song with words, and finally
of the opera, the text of which should therefore never forsake that
subordinate position in order to make itself the chief thing and the music
a mere means of expressing it, which is a great misconception and a piece
of utter perversity; for music always expresses only the quintessence of
life and its events, never these themselves, and therefore their
differences do not always affect it. It is precisely this universality,
which belongs exclusively to it, together with the greatest
determinateness, that gives music the high worth which it has as the
panacea for all our woes. Thus, if music is too closely united to the
words, and tries to form itself according to the events, it is striving to
speak a language which is not its own. No one has kept so free from this
mistake as Rossini; therefore his music speaks _its own language_ so
distinctly and purely that it requires no words, and produces its full
effect when rendered by instruments alone.
According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and
music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore
itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is
demanded in order to understand that analogy. Music, therefore, if
regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a
universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of
concepts, much as they are related to the particular things. Its
universality, however, is by no means that empty universality of
abstraction, but quite of a different kind, and is united with thorough
and distinct definiteness. In this respect it resembles geometrical
figures and numbers, which are the universal forms of all possible objects
of experience and applicable to them all _a priori_, and yet are not
abstract but perceptible and thoroughly determined. All possible efforts,
excitements, and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of
man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may
be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in
the universal, in the mere form, without the material, always according to
the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of
the phenomenon, without the body. This deep relation which music has to
the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music
played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us
its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct
commentary upon it. This is so truly the case, that whoever gives himself
up entirely to the impression of a symphony, seems to see all the possible
events of life and the world take place in himself, yet if he reflects, he
can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before
his mind. For, as we have said, music is distinguished from all the other
arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more
accurately, the adequate objectivity of will, but is the direct copy of
the will itself, and therefore exhibits itself as the metaphysical to
everything physical in the world, and as the thing-in-itself to every
phenomenon. We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied
music as embodied will; and this is the reason why music makes every
picture, and indeed every scene of real life and of the world, at once
appear with higher significance, certainly all the more in proportion as
its melody is analogous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon. It
rests upon this that we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a
perceptible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such
particular pictures of human life, set to the universal language of music,
are never bound to it or correspond to it with stringent necessity; but
they stand to it only in the relation of an example chosen at will to a
general concept. In the determinateness of the real, they represent that
which music expresses in the universality of mere form. For melodies are
to a certain extent, like general concepts, an abstraction from the
actual. This actual world, then, the world of particular things, affords
the object of perception, the special and individual, the particular case,
both to the universality of the concepts and to the universality of the
melodies. But these two universalities are in a certain respect opposed to
each other; for the concepts contain particulars only as the first forms
abstracted from perception, as it were, the separated shell of things;
thus they are, strictly speaking, _abstracta_; music, on the other hand,
gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things.
This relation may be very well expressed in the language of the schoolmen
by saying the concepts are the _universalia post rem_, but music gives the
_universalia ante rem_, and the real world the _universalia in re_. To the
universal significance of a melody to which a poem has been set, it is
quite possible to set other equally arbitrarily selected examples of the
universal expressed in this poem corresponding to the significance of the
melody in the same degree. This is why the same composition is suitable to
many verses; and this is also what makes the _vaudeville_ possible. But
that in general a relation is possible between a composition and a
perceptible representation rests, as we have said, upon the fact that both
are simply different expressions of the same inner being of the world.
When now, in the particular case, such a relation is actually given, that
is to say, when the composer has been able to express in the universal
language of music the emotions of will which constitute the heart of an
event, then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive.
But the analogy discovered by the composer between the two must have
proceeded from the direct knowledge of the nature of the world unknown to
his reason, and must not be an imitation produced with conscious intention
by means of conceptions, otherwise the music does not express the inner
nature of the will itself, but merely gives an inadequate imitation of its
phenomenon. All specially imitative music does this; for example, “The
Seasons,” by Haydn; also many passages of his “Creation,” in which
phenomena of the external world are directly imitated; also all
battle-pieces. Such music is entirely to be rejected.
The unutterable depth of all music by virtue of which it floats through
our consciousness as the vision of a paradise firmly believed in yet ever
distant from us, and by which also it is so fully understood and yet so
inexplicable, rests on the fact that it restores to us all the emotions of
our inmost nature, but entirely without reality and far removed from their
pain. So also the seriousness which is essential to it, which excludes the
absurd from its direct and peculiar province, is to be explained by the
fact that its object is not the idea, with reference to which alone
deception and absurdity are possible; but its object is directly the will,
and this is essentially the most serious of all things, for it is that on
which all depends. How rich in content and full of significance the
language of music is, we see from the repetitions, as well as the _Da
capo_, the like of which would be unbearable in works composed in a
language of words, but in music are very appropriate and beneficial, for,
in order to comprehend it fully, we must hear it twice.
In the whole of this exposition of music I have been trying to bring out
clearly that it expresses in a perfectly universal language, in a
homogeneous material, mere tones, and with the greatest determinateness
and truth, the inner nature, the in-itself of the world, which we think
under the concept of will, because will is its most distinct
manifestation. Further, according to my view and contention, philosophy is
nothing but a complete and accurate repetition or expression of the nature
of the world in very general concepts, for only in such is it possible to
get a view of that whole nature which will everywhere be adequate and
applicable. Thus, whoever has followed me and entered into my mode of
thought, will not think it so very paradoxical if I say, that supposing it
were possible to give a perfectly accurate, complete explanation of music,
extending even to particulars, that is to say, a detailed repetition in
concepts of what it expresses, this would also be a sufficient repetition
and explanation of the world in concepts, or at least entirely parallel to
such an explanation, and thus it would be the true philosophy.
Consequently the saying of Leibnitz quoted above, which is quite accurate
from a lower standpoint, may be parodied in the following way to suit our
higher view of music: _Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum
nescientis se philosophari animi_; for _scire_, to know, always means to
have fixed in abstract concepts. But further, on account of the truth of
the saying of Leibnitz, which is confirmed in various ways, music,
regarded apart from its æsthetic or inner significance, and looked at
merely externally and purely empirically, is simply the means of
comprehending directly and in the concrete large numbers and complex
relations of numbers, which otherwise we could only know indirectly by
fixing them in concepts. Therefore by the union of these two very
different but correct views of music we may arrive at a conception of the
possibility of a philosophy of number, such as that of Pythagoras and of
the Chinese in Y-King, and then interpret in this sense the saying of the
Pythagoreans which Sextus Empiricus quotes (adv. Math., L. vii.): τῳ
αριθμῳ δε τα παντ᾽ επεοικεν (_numero cuncta assimilantur_). And if,
finally, we apply this view to the interpretation of harmony and melody
given above, we shall find that a mere moral philosophy without an
explanation of Nature, such as Socrates wanted to introduce, is precisely
analogous to a mere melody without harmony, which Rousseau exclusively
desired; and, in opposition to this mere physics and metaphysics without
ethics, will correspond to mere harmony without melody. Allow me to add to
these cursory observations a few more remarks concerning the analogy of
music with the phenomenal world. We found in the second book that the
highest grade of the objectification of will, man, could not appear alone
and isolated, but presupposed the grades below him, as these again
presupposed the grades lower still. In the same way music, which directly
objectifies the will, just as the world does, is complete only in full
harmony. In order to achieve its full effect, the high leading voice of
the melody requires the accompaniment of all the other voices, even to the
lowest bass, which is to be regarded as the origin of all. The melody
itself enters as an integral part into the harmony, as the harmony enters
into it, and only thus, in the full harmonious whole, music expresses what
it aims at expressing. Thus also the one will outside of time finds its
full objectification only in the complete union of all the steps which
reveal its nature in the innumerable ascending grades of distinctness. The
following analogy is also very remarkable. We have seen in the preceding
book that notwithstanding the self-adaptation of all the phenomena of will
to each other as regards their species, which constitutes their
teleological aspect, there yet remains an unceasing conflict between those
phenomena as individuals, which is visible at every grade, and makes the
world a constant battle-field of all those manifestations of one and the
same will, whose inner contradiction with itself becomes visible through
it. In music also there is something corresponding to this. A complete,
pure, harmonious system of tones is not only physically but arithmetically
impossible. The numbers themselves by which the tones are expressed have
inextricable irrationality. There is no scale in which, when it is
counted, every fifth will be related to the keynote as 2 to 3, every major
third as 4 to 5, every minor third as 5 to 6, and so on. For if they are
correctly related to the keynote, they can no longer be so to each other;
because, for example, the fifth must be the minor third to the third, &c.
For the notes of the scale may be compared to actors who must play now one
part, now another. Therefore a perfectly accurate system of music cannot
even be thought, far less worked out; and on this account all possible
music deviates from perfect purity; it can only conceal the discords
essential to it by dividing them among all the notes, _i.e._, by
temperament. On this see Chladni’s “Akustik,” § 30, and his “Kurze
Uebersicht der Schall- und Klanglehre.”(63)
I might still have something to say about the way in which music is
perceived, namely, in and through time alone, with absolute exclusion of
space, and also apart from the influence of the knowledge of causality,
thus without understanding; for the tones make the æsthetic impression as
effect, and without obliging us to go back to their causes, as in the case
of perception. I do not wish, however, to lengthen this discussion, as I
have perhaps already gone too much into detail with regard to some things
in this Third Book, or have dwelt too much on particulars. But my aim made
it necessary, and it will be the less disapproved if the importance and
high worth of art, which is seldom sufficiently recognised, be kept in
mind. For if, according to our view, the whole visible world is just the
objectification, the mirror, of the will, conducting it to knowledge of
itself, and, indeed, as we shall soon see, to the possibility of its
deliverance; and if, at the same time, the world as idea, if we regard it
in isolation, and, freeing ourselves from all volition, allow it alone to
take possession of our consciousness, is the most joy-giving and the only
innocent side of life; we must regard art as the higher ascent, the more
complete development of all this, for it achieves essentially just what is
achieved by the visible world itself, only with greater concentration,
more perfectly, with intention and intelligence, and therefore may be
called, in the full significance of the word, the flower of life. If the
whole world as idea is only the visibility of will, the work of art is to
render this visibility more distinct. It is the _camera obscura_ which
shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey them and
comprehend them better. It is the play within the play, the stage upon the
stage in “Hamlet.”
The pleasure we receive from all beauty, the consolation which art
affords, the enthusiasm of the artist, which enables him to forget the
cares of life,—the latter an advantage of the man of genius over other
men, which alone repays him for the suffering that increases in proportion
to the clearness of consciousness, and for the desert loneliness among men
of a different race,—all this rests on the fact that the in-itself of
life, the will, existence itself, is, as we shall see farther on, a
constant sorrow, partly miserable, partly terrible; while, on the
contrary, as idea alone, purely contemplated, or copied by art, free from
pain, it presents to us a drama full of significance. This purely knowable
side of the world, and the copy of it in any art, is the element of the
artist. He is chained to the contemplation of the play, the
objectification of will; he remains beside it, does not get tired of
contemplating it and representing it in copies; and meanwhile he bears
himself the cost of the production of that play, _i.e._, he himself is the
will which objectifies itself, and remains in constant suffering. That
pure, true, and deep knowledge of the inner nature of the world becomes
now for him an end in itself: he stops there. Therefore it does not become
to him a quieter of the will, as, we shall see in the next book, it does
in the case of the saint who has attained to resignation; it does not
deliver him for ever from life, but only at moments, and is therefore not
for him a path out of life, but only an occasional consolation in it, till
his power, increased by this contemplation and at last tired of the play,
lays hold on the real. The St. Cecilia of Raphael may be regarded as a
representation of this transition. To the real, then, we now turn in the
following book.
FOURTH BOOK. THE WORLD AS WILL.
Second Aspect. The Assertion And Denial Of The Will To Live, When
Self-Consciousness Has Been Attained.
Tempore quo cognitio simul advenit, amor e medio
supersurrexit.—_Oupnek’hat,_
_Studio Anquetil Duperron_, vol. ii. p. 216.